Relentless Protector

by Colleen Thompson

  Though he thought it was odd that she would send him for tissues she didn’t need, he was grateful she was feeling better. Vowing to avoid upsetting her again, he decided that sharing more positive news would help, especially since it didn’t involve a child. “I understand it looks as though the security guard is going to pull through.”

  Lisa nodded. “That’s great. I heard the same thing from Deputy Keller at the station—the one whose partner was hurt so badly. Poor woman looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.”

  “Did she mention Deputy Sutherland’s condition?”

  Turning from the counter, Lisa hugged her middle. “Even if he survives,” she said, her brown eyes somber, “he could be permanently paralyzed.”

  “Such a damned waste,” Cole said, stricken by how quickly and cruelly a person’s life could change forever. Just as Lisa’s had done when a pair of carjackers took her son.

  Changing the subject, he asked, “Were you able to remember any more about Evie LeStrange?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. You know, I really don’t...” Her hand jerked to her forehead, where she massaged the pressure points. “I’m glad you stopped by, Cole. Thank you. But I think it would be better if you left now.”

  Troubled by her abrupt shift of behavior, he asked, “What’s wrong, Lisa?” Had his mention of Evie been the trigger? Or was she still thinking of the teller, with her husband at her side and her healthy baby boy in her arms?

  “What isn’t?” she asked, her voice breaking and fresh moisture gleaming along her lower lashes. “I have an awful headache, I’m not sleeping and my stomach hurts because the only thing I’ve been able to cram down are these stupid brownies.” She picked up a paper plate and flung the chocolate squares into the trash can.

  “Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you?”

  She snatched up a handful of tissues and shoved them into the lumpy pocket of her sweater. “If you’ll just leave, I can go to bed and lie down.”

  No way was he abandoning her in this state. There was something going on here, something more than she was saying. “I can’t do that, Lisa. I promised your father I would stay till he gets back. And that’s what I’m going to do. But you can head upstairs and rest if you’d like.”

  Maybe she just needed to cry again and didn’t want him to see her doing it. That must be it.

  She hesitated, their gazes locking, and he was sure she was about to throw herself into his arms again. As useless as he had been at consoling her the first time, he could hardly blame her when she turned around and bolted for the stairs.

  * * *

  WITH THE RESTLESS ENERGY of a caged lioness, Lisa paced the confines of her bedroom. Why couldn’t Cole just leave as she had asked him? She needed the ex-Ranger, with his talent for interference, out of here before her dad returned.

  With a trembling sigh, she reached into her pocket, past the camouflaging tissues, and pulled out the first of the two items she had shoved in when she sent him out of the room: the card left with the cake she’d found on her doorstep earlier.

  Since the box had been stamped with the name of a local bakery, she had thought nothing of the fact that the offering wasn’t homemade. She’d been equally unsurprised by the innocuous greeting on the card’s front, a supportive message little different from dozens of other cards she had received.

  But there the resemblance ended, because a single glance inside was enough to send her pulse racing. This, she’d realized instantly, was the communication she’d been waiting for, and it hadn’t come in a phone call that the FBI would hear through their tap, or through the mail, which was also being strictly monitored. Instead, the message had arrived through a local delivery, one that Evie must somehow have arranged.

  Opening the card once again, Lisa stared at the enclosed picture, which looked like a low-res camera photo. Though the image was of poor quality, she could easily make out Tyler in his booster seat, looking as if he might burst into tears at any moment. He was holding up a national newspaper with yesterday’s headlines; she recognized the lead story right away.

  “I’m coming, baby, I promise,” she whispered as her own tears dripped onto the picture. “Just a tiny bit longer, my brave little soldier. I know you can do this.”

  Forcing herself to turn it over, she reread the handwritten message she had only skimmed before.

  There were only a few lines, words so blunt, so cruel, that the very sight of them had hot bile burning her throat. Fighting to keep herself from hyperventilating, she forced herself to focus not on the threat but on the demand for a private meeting a half hour after midnight. A meeting she had no idea how she could possibly pull off with no car, no privacy and an all-too-capable babysitter close at hand.

  “Where, Evie? Where do you want me to go?” Would the second item contain the answer, a cheap prepaid cell phone hidden, as the card had promised, under the cake itself?

  Pulling it out of an icing-spotted plastic sandwich bag, she switched on the power button. As she waited for it to find a signal, her gaze flicked to the glowing numbers of the digital clock on her nightstand. Numbers counting down the hours and the minutes she had left.

  Left to live, she realized, well aware of the import of Evie’s cruel message: that Lisa’s sole chance to save Tyler was in exchanging her own life for her son’s.

  Swallowing past a lump in her throat, she told herself that if that was what the sadistic bitch demanded, it was what she was prepared to offer.

  Unless she could somehow manage to kill Evie LeStrange first.

  Chapter Eleven

  “No, I won’t go home,” Deputy Jill Keller argued with her boss. Exhausted and emotionally wrung out, she felt the burning threat of tears, but she would be damned if she would shed a single one in front of Sheriff Hank Stewart, or any place where her coworkers or, worse yet, those FBI outsiders might see.

  Stewart hauled his considerable bulk out of his desk chair. “You’re not thinking like an investigator right now. You’re thinking like a wife—a wife who needs to be by Trace’s side.”

  “I. Am. Not. His. Wife,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “And just in case you or anybody else around here has forgotten that, believe me, the point was driven home when I showed up at the hospital in Austin. I’m no longer next of kin. No longer anything to him.” Her vision began to blur. “Damn it all.”

  She whirled, turning her back and wiping away the angry tears. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just— I’m tired.”

  The floor creaked with Stewart’s footsteps as he came up behind her, then patted her back with a meaty hand. Could this day get any more humiliating?

  “Don’t apologize for being human,” he said, his deep voice softer than she had ever heard it. “It’s been an emotional time for everybody around here. You know I hired that boy practically right outta high school. Taught him everything I know. Nobody could’ve ever asked for a better deputy, a better man than—hell, girl, now you’ve got me—”

  It was his turn to pull away, fumbling in embarrassment for the folded bandanna in his pocket. “If I was any kind of a gentleman, I’d offer this to you,” he said before blowing his nose into it with a honk so loud it made them both laugh.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I’d just as soon you keep it. But keep me on the task force, too. If I can’t be part of Trace’s recovery—and believe me, his parents have made it quite plain that’s not my place—I have to be a part of hunting down the bastards who did this to him.”

  Stewart shook his head. “Sorry, Jill, but you know those FBI boys already figure we’re just a bunch of ignorant country yokels out here. I won’t have ’em believin’ we’re so unprofessional as to let some trigger-happy deputy with a personal involvement jeopardize the investigation.”

  “Who says I’m trigger-happy?”

  “How ’bout that witness from the bank parking lot, for starters? The one you pulled your gun on.”

  “But he was being deliberately uncooperative.�
��

  Stewart rolled his eyes. “When it comes to getting the job done, you’ve always been a hard-driving, take-no-prisoners kind of gal. It’s something I like about you, even when it gives me a damned headache. But in this particular case, I don’t need some college boy special agent from the bureau tellin’ me that you’ve lost all perspective. I can see it in your face, girl. Now get on out of here for a few days, leastwise till we catch those sons of bitches.”

  “You don’t understand. I need this.”

  “And I need you to go home, or, better yet, drive back to Austin and try to make peace with your former in-laws. Because you’re the one Trace needs by his side, the face he wants to see when he wakes up. You mark my words, that boy’s no more moved on in the past year than you have.”

  The ever-present anger flared, flashing red as blood across her vision. “With all due respect, sir,” she managed, “what’s between Trace and me is none of your damned business.”

  Their gazes locked, and she saw the heat building behind his, the struggle as he fought to control his temper. That makes two of us.

  “You’re right about that, Deputy,” he finally told her. “What is my business is your job performance, and right now you’re not fit for duty.”

  “I can be. I swear to you, I’ll—”

  “This subject isn’t open for discussion,” he said sternly. “My only question is, are you gonna take a few days willingly, or do I need to confiscate your badge and gun?”

  Jaw set, she glared straight at him before unpinning her badge and unbuckling her holster.

  “You can take this badge and gun and—” she started.

  “Before you finish that sentence,” he said, his round face florid, “you might want to think about what that hot head of yours is about to cost you, Deputy. Or maybe I should say ‘what else,’ because it seems to me like it’s already cost you something a hell of a lot more important than any job on earth.”

  Jill opened her mouth, still ready to tell him what he could do with his job. But an image of Trace lying in intensive care, his face pale and his body the center of a beeping spider’s web of tubes and wires, rose before her, the single glimpse she’d managed before his mother shrieked, “Are you happy now, Jill? Happy that you’ve finally finished off what breaking his heart started? Because I know this is all your fault. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind.”

  Releasing a deep breath, she looked into Stewart’s eyes and nodded. “I—I’ll be taking some vacation, Sheriff. You have my cell number if you need me.”

  She quickly left the office. But not before replacing the badge and rebuckling the gun holster that were as much a part of her as any of her limbs.

  * * *

  WITH THE SAME RUTHLESS efficiency he had once used to fieldstrip an automatic weapon or plan a stealth mission, Cole organized the excess of food gifts in the kitchen. But as he found refrigerator space for the perishables, moved all the baked goods to one countertop and trashed anything that no longer appeared edible, his mind kept wandering to Lisa and the way she’d so abruptly tried to dismiss him.

  It was probably no more than he’d thought earlier, a stressed, exhausted woman wanting the privacy to break down, but something about her behavior troubled him, especially when he checked the box she had been looking into and found the cake inside tipped over and all but destroyed.

  Could Lisa have done that, he asked himself, recalling her wiping icing off her hand, and if so, why? Wondering if there might have been something disturbing in the message that came with it—perhaps another interview request from the relentless Penny Carlson—he began looking for the accompanying card he’d seen Lisa reading.

  He couldn’t find it anywhere, not among the other cards, on the floor or in the trash can. Had she taken it upstairs with her for some reason? And could that card be the reason for her sudden eagerness to be rid of him?

  Cole stiffened, a buzz arcing across millions of nerve endings. He could be dead wrong, but he would rather make a fool of himself and get kicked out of her house forever than take a chance on letting her do something desperate on her own.

  He hadn’t made it two steps when the side door off the kitchen opened.

  “Hey, Sawyer, how ’bout a hand here?” asked Lisa’s father, who was juggling sacks of groceries and a bag of dog food that a little bit of fluff like Rowdy couldn’t finish in months.

  “We have to hurry.” Grabbing the kibble, Cole slung the bag onto the counter. “We need to check on Lisa right now.”

  Instantly alarmed, the old man dropped the other groceries next to the dog food. “I thought you said you’d keep an eye on her. Where is she?”

  Heading for the stairs, Cole explained, “She told me she felt sick and she was going up to lie down. But I just realized she took something up there with her—a card that I’m pretty sure upset her.”

  Sid Hartfield was right behind him, saying, “Hold your horses. You should let me—”

  But Cole was already halfway up the staircase, and he wasn’t stopping now. “Which door?” he called back.

  “What?” Struggling to catch up, Sid Hartfield was panting up the steps behind Cole.

  “Which one is her bedroom?”

  “First door on the left, but you be sure and knock,” her father said.

  Cole tapped once to humor him before flinging the door open. “Lisa?”

  He saw no one except Rowdy, who was wagging his tail, and beyond him, only a dresser and a neatly made four-poster bed, with a closed laptop sitting beside it on the nightstand. Undisturbed, a pair of curtains partly obscured a closed window. Noticing what appeared to be an open walk-in closet, Cole strode toward it and called her name again.

  But there was no one there, either.

  From the hall, her father called, “Bathroom door’s closed.” He pounded on it. “Lisa? You in the shower?”

  As Cole approached, he heard the water running.

  “Maybe she can’t hear me,” said her father.

  Bypassing him, Cole tried the door. Locked. More concerned than ever, he pounded on the door so hard that it shook on its frame. “Turn off the water,” he shouted, his voice a loud, deep rumble that the neighbors probably heard. “Lisa, it’s important.”

  When there was no response, he added the one lie sure to get through to her, no matter how much she craved privacy. “The sheriff’s here to see you.”

  Catching on, her father added, “About Tyler.”

  As the tension in the hallway built, the water continued running. Glancing at Lisa’s father, Cole said, “This door is coming down.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he backed up and took a run at it, then kicked hard. There was a splintering crack, but the doors in the old house were solid, and it took two more bruising charges before he had it off its hinges.

  Squeezed into the bathroom, he saw that Lisa wasn’t in the shower, and the steam in the room wasn’t nearly as thick as he might have expected—because the window was wide open. A window that he quickly discovered was only a few feet above the roof of the back porch. From there, it would be an easy climb down to the backyard and the escape that she had been so desperate to achieve.

  * * *

  AS SHE CLIMBED INTO her Honda and started for home, Jill Keller was fuming, still thinking of Sheriff Stewart’s last words to her. So he, like everybody else, blamed her for the breakup of her marriage. No surprise there, but she wondered, would Stewart, whose own wife had left him years ago citing the complaint that he was never home, put up with the kind of ultimatum Trace had given her?

  “If you really want a family, you’re going to have to find another career,” he’d said, while she was still reeling in the wake of the beating and the miscarriage that followed, her soul ravaged with guilt that went far deeper than the pain of her physical injuries.

  It was a guilt magnified a hundredfold by the knowledge that Trace blamed her, too, for pushing the boundaries as she always did, mercilessly harassing Jimmy James Barlow
, a man she absolutely knew was regularly knocking the snot out of his live-in girlfriend. When she’d finally badgered the girlfriend into filing charges and shown up to arrest him, Jill had made a point of forcing the bastard to do the perp walk in front of his drinking buddies, and yeah, she’d lobbed a few humiliating zingers his way, but no more than a worm like that had coming.

  But the beaten-down girlfriend soon lost her nerve, resulting in Barlow’s release the next morning. Furious, he’d broken her jaw before lying in wait for Jill, who’d been off-duty and unarmed, on her way home from a visit to the obstetrician, when he’d beaten her until the heartbeat she had just heard for the first time was irrevocably silenced.

  “I can’t go through this again,” Trace had told her, tears gleaming in his dark eyes. “I won’t risk losing you—or leaving any kids we might have motherless.”

  But law enforcement wasn’t only what Jill did; it was who she was. It was all she could remember ever wanting since first watching her father, a former Tuller County sheriff, pin on his own badge and strap on his leather holster. His heart had given out when she was twelve, but she preferred to remember him standing tall in uniform, a tough-talking, hard-driving scourge on the area’s lawbreakers.

  Certainly he wouldn’t have wasted a moment worrying whether he’d hurt the feelings of a piece of garbage like Jimmy James Barlow, who was now serving a long sentence.

  But this morning it wasn’t her father’s once hale and hearty image that rose from the grave to haunt her. It was the thought of Trace, lying near death in that hospital in Austin. Lying there because of the murderous actions of a pair of carjackers—the same carjackers who had stolen Lisa Meador’s five-year-old son.

  Low in Jill’s belly, a spark of rage reignited. Because anger was an old friend, far more comfortable than grief.

  It was that anger that had her turning off her normal route with the thought of questioning Lisa Meador one more time. Distracted by her personal tragedy, the woman would neither know nor care that Jill was supposed to be on leave.